


Broken

by divapilot



Category: The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Child Neglect, Death, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 18:06:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4359011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divapilot/pseuds/divapilot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After experiencing devastating loss, Katniss’s mother must find the will to live again for her daughters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken

She remembers the day the black snow fell.

She remembers every detail. She remembers the sound and the shuddering earth; the rumbling, crashing thunder from beneath the ground. She remembers the brief stillness before the unnatural snow begins to fall, great black and grey wisps carried from the mountain’s edge to the town, swirling and fluttering in the November air. She stands on the porch, her thin fingers wrapped around the railing, and when she raises her hand to her eyes and peers skyward into the falling ash as if looking for the source of the cataclysm, the soot leaves a smudge across her brow. The alarms begin to ring, men and women run towards the mine, and her world crumples.

Her children come to her seeking comfort and reassurance but she has none to give. The black snow flecks little Prim’s blonde hair, and she stares at her mother’s face in trusting belief that whatever was wrong, her mother will right it. Primrose is so like her, delicate and trusting, but Katniss has the soot black hair and the ash gray eyes of her father. Katniss looks toward the mines and knows. 

She stands paralyzed, her hands still clutching the porch railing, until the neighbor comes by to report the inevitable. He guides her back inside and sits her down in the rocking chair, her girls beside her. Katniss rails against the news, shouting and flailing as if she could physically force the explosion back underground. Primrose curls against her like a kitten, seeking comfort from her mother from the confusion and palpable horror. 

The neighbor stays for the rest of the day, putting together a meal that goes uneaten. She didn’t – couldn’t – move. Eventually the neighbor puts the girls to bed and leaves, his own family needing him. She sits in that chair for days, maybe weeks. She isn’t sure. She isn’t sure of anything anymore.

She recalls how her husband had won her with his quick smile and generous heart, and they had spent a summer together, courting, among the wildflowers. She would meet him in the meadow after he had worked his hours in the mines. She remembers that even though he had wiped the grime and soot away, there would always be dark edges to his fingernails and his clothes always smelled like coal dust. He picked flowers and, singing softly to her, he placed them in her hair as they lay together in the warm sun. He was always conscious of the fact that she had given up her higher social status when she married him, and because he had wanted better for his family, he had taken the extra shifts regardless of the danger.

Those summer days seem like another person’s lifetime now. She feels ripped apart, as if the half of the flesh and blood that makes her whole had been violently sundered from her body. Breathing is difficult. Logically, she knows that her heart still beats, but she doesn’t know how it could when there is a dark crater in her chest.

The world sides slowly past, the days slurring into each other. She is aware of the terrible neglect she is doing to her children, the hunger and the fear that she fails to address. There are no more food rations since no one in the family works in the mines anymore. The clothes she had been saving for the next baby are gone, and she concludes that Katniss must have sold them. It is no matter; there will never be another child now. She recognizes starvation in her children; the deep circles beneath Prim’s blue eyes, the strands of dark hair that fall out as she mechanically braids Katniss’s hair every morning. Katniss gets Prim ready for school, and sometimes Katniss does not come home at the end of the school day. She is not sure where her older child goes, but occasionally there is a squirrel or a rabbit that Katniss has trapped. She stares at her daughter’s catch and cannot for the life of her remember what to do with it. She runs her fingers against her vast collection of herbs and cannot recall how the healing arts work. It’s as if the fire that burned away everything in the explosion has turned her mind to ash. 

Her grief is a stone around her neck, and she lacks the strength to remove it.

Eventually the choking grief gives way to the heavy shroud of widowhood, the way the frost slowly but deliberately covers the windowpane. Her husband is gone, and the summer of her life is over. She must somehow look past the broken debris of her life and find what can be salvaged. She must. If she lets his daughters starve to death, his sacrifice will have been for nothing.

It is a cold evening, and the wolfish chill has clawed into the small house. Her girls shiver together in their bed, huddled under patchwork quilts as she sits beside a futile fire. Prim, dear Prim, has placed a quilt across her mother’s legs to keep her warm. She looks down at the quilt, the fabric patterned with small red and yellow flowers from some garment grown too worn for wear. The tiny flowers remind her of the summer she spent by his side, the flowers he had placed in her golden hair.

She hears Katniss singing softly, and she realizes why she is thinking of that meadow. She struggles to come back to her children, and she leans toward the sound of Katniss’s clear voice.  
And here your dreams are sweet  
And tomorrow brings them true  
Here is the place where I love you.

Her husband had sung that to her first; then, when the children were born, he had rocked them to sleep with the same melody. Now Katniss sings it to Primrose. She hears the song again, and it becomes the light that brings her back.

Finally, her mind releases the paralysis, exposing little cracks that allow her to reach through the rubble. She rises, walks over to the small bedroom, and embraces her children in her arms. Nothing can ever be the same. But when tomorrow comes, somehow she will learn to live again.


End file.
